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March 29, 2003
Standards-compliant design
Luc provides a pointer to part one of an interview with Mike Davidson of ESPN regarding standards-compliant web design. This is a subject near and dear to my heart. On the one hand, I look with longing at pages that are lighter because much of the decision to avoid accommodating 1990s browsers. On the other hand, I worry about the math...even 2% of a large number is a healthy number of visitors. For example, the article provides page view numbers rather than visitor sessions, but if you guestimate that ESPN visitors average 4 pages per visit, then they are looking at something like 10 million visitors per day. So that means that they have intentionally chosen to shut out a quarter-million visitors from their site. Ballsy! Their somewhat compelling argument: "This is not a hospital, we are not doctors here... people aren't dying. The worst thing that is going to happen is that people won't get their sports." I wonder if their position will change if the advertiser base drys up for them as it has for so many others? This quote is also interesting: [T]he success of our site depends largely on the presentation of our content. We'd rather assertively tell you why your browser needs to be updated than show you an ugly shadow of our front page and have you assume we did something wrong. I'm don't think that I agree with this position. I believe that the majority of web visitors have very little appreciation for the amount of pixel-pushing that your average web designer goes through during the development stage. And I'd bet money that this is definitely true for those folks who haven't upgraded from NS4! So...I don't disagree with the premise that folks haven't upgraded because they don't know that they should or could. I guess I disagree with the idea that you should strong-arm folks into upgrading. If you are going to dump folks to an upgrade page, why not dump folks to a less-sophisticated page with a notice (even a pop-up one) that says their experience would be improved by a new browser version? I don't want to be held hostage by site visitors, but I'm not sure that I want to think so little of my visitors or my content that the ESPN route would be my first choice. Then again, I really would like those lite pages! Sigh.
Comments
Hi Beth. A couple of comments to your comments: 1. Our statement says that less than 2% of our visitors have non-compliant browsers. This is based on unique visitors of course. So, for instance, if we had 10 million unique visitors one month, that would be less than 200,000 people (or the equivalent of two college football stadiums full). That's not a huge number considering that the base is so high and also considering that we've convinced a significant portion of these people to upgrade since the redesign. Side note: The 2% statistic was *before* the redesign and that number has of course dropped significantly since some people are upgrading and some people probably aren't coming back. Either way, our traffic has actually increased since the redesign (perhaps since our front page loads so much quicker). 2. As for advertising drying up, we have so many page views of our site already that we don't even have enough advertising inventory to fill it all. 1 billion page views a month is a lot of space to fill!!! Additionally, we are able to offer more attractive ad placements with this redesign so the revenue per ad unit is also better under this new system. 3. I agree that most users probably don't consciously notice the intricacies of web design but they do come away from the site with an internal concept of "wow, I just got to exactly what I needed very quickly" or "jeez, why did it take sooooo long to find that article". Consciously or subconsciously, presentation matters to the user. 4. Regarding the strongarm tactics of throwing a browser upgrade page up instead of unstyled content. This may not be a permanent policy but it sure works great for getting huge waves of people and IT departments to upgrade in a timely fashion. All it really takes is one ESPN fan in the IT department of a company to get sent to our upgrade page and then decide to upgrade all of his/her users. As I mentioned in the article, we feel honored to help create the need for a browser upgrade. Keep up the good work. Mike -- Posted by Mike Davidson on April 2, 2003 10:16 PM
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IDblog is Beth Mazur tilting at power law windmills. A little bit Internet, a little bit technology, a little bit society, and a lot about designing useful information products. Send your cards and letters to .
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